BIG EDIT: I've created a subreddit for this idea, which I'm calling Stockcraft. I'm talking with a friend now of hosting the server but first I'll likely need to get the FactoryMod recipes figured out. I'd love any input from you as well to help with this.

Civcraft has arguably one of the coolest gaming mechanics of all time, with things like Citadel, Prison Pearl, and Factories to make people work together and let the community self-regulate itself. I love this server. However, I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that it's truly not that different from vanilla minecraft in regards to actual gameplay other than PrisonPearl (which is the best thing to happen to multiplayer gaming ever).

My thinking was, shouldn't the server actually be about seeing the effects of scarcity by using only non-renewable resources in factory recipes? Forget mob drops (which are incredibly hard to get anyways now with Mustercull) and giant auto-farms that essentially do the work for you. Make every factory take dirt, gravel, spawners, lava, or ore to output things.

What would happen? If we set the numbers incredibly high, say, 1728 dirt (or one single chest) to make 4 EXP bottles, wouldn't that be nuts to witness the excavation of the server's topsoil? Gravel, lava, and ore could work the same way, with exceedingly high numbers to produce the smallest amount of goods. Now there's the conflict of do we farm for food or do we tear up the soil to use in the factory?

Right now the answer to almost any question is too easy a solution, because there's no alternative use. If someone finds a spider spawner of course they're going to make a spider farm to collect spider eyes, there's no downside or alternative use. However, what if that spawner could be used in a high-value factory recipe? That's a much harder decision to make (one super valuable factory recipe vs. infinite spider eyes), and one that would require deliberation and debate amongst citizens.

My point is renewable resources and Larger Biomes are great at getting people to work together. But throughout history co-operation has been the exception between societies, not the norm. We don't sit down and swap our potatoes for your carrots to mutually benefit each other, we invade your country to claim your oil. If FactoryMod started using only non-renewable resources we'd see an increase in server generated conflict and arguably a system closer to real world politics.

It would also fuel political discussion. What do we do with these non-renewable resources? What's the best application of them? People would have to debate and agree upon the ways to use these non-renewable resources, and thus politics would emerge. Right now, there's no need to debate how to use my town's wheat because it'll grow back in 4 hours. But if a town collected dozens of stacks of dirt and gravel that they could only use for one purpose, then political discourse becomes a necessity. Do we let a monarch rule over the decisions or do we let democracy let everyone have their vote. Right now most of the "politics" on the server carry little consequence. Holding office in New Danzilona for a couple months meant that I mostly just kept the maps up to date and repaired roads. My decision making was easy because it was almost always unanimous what to do, because there are no worthy alternative uses for things like potatoes and wheat. Ex: Should we farm wheat to make EXP? Yes? Okay that's what I thought.

Finally, environmental problems. Factories and industrialization have always brought with them pollution and danger to the environment. With FactoryMod, this is not a factor. If the recipes for EXp were switched to dirt and gravel and ore, however, we'd start to see people crying out for wildlife preserves and such, just so that the server doesn't become one giant flat wasteland. It brings in the factor of, "You can have a rich town, but it's going to tax the environment." Again, we see new added conflicts that are not present on the server at the moment.

Just some thoughts I felt like discussing with you people. I'm not saying this should be Civcraft 3.0 or anything, but I'm just looking to debate these ideas and see what you think of them.

Thanks for reading! :D

TL;DR: Make factory recipes require non-renewable resources (dirt, gravel, ore, lava, spawners) and see the effects play out.

EDIT: I commented this below but I'll post it here for visibility:

Also, it just occurred to me you could still have Factory recipes that use renewable resources, but only make those factories available through resources put out by the non-renewable ones (sort of like how Bastion factories are made).

Like a technology tree, you go from coal and oil power plants to wind farms and solar panels. This would mean more advanced cities would fight to acquire more citizens to use their renewable factories rather than let people lonewolf it and tear up the server's countryside to fuel their own primitive factories.

We could certainly slow down the degradation process through combating people using non-renewable factories. Like today, the U.N. is faced with enforcing environmental standards on less technologically developed countries, we could see a coalition form on the server to try and prevent people from using these non-renewable factories. Thus, people would flock more to the modernized cities that use renewable factories, and conflict would be born out of some people's reluctance to join them.

EDIT 2: Someone brought up this point so I thought I'd post my response for visibility.

If someone told me civcraft was a server where you had to strip mine vast quantities of rocks and dirt, ruining the map for the purpose of generating XP, I wouldn't even bother checking it out.

Understandable. But you must admit most of the server conflicts come from HCF raids and PrisonPearl, not FactoryMod or Realistic Biomes. It's like Civcraft is more PvP centralized than anything, since that's where the conflict is. And the renewable factories idea I mentioned could be a way to eliminate environmental damage, and creating new conflicts in itself (a server wide coalition banning the use of non-renewable factories, causing primitive towns to rebel).